Last Call At Ric's

A Final Toast To The Watering Hole Ric Riccardo Left Chicago

September 15, 1995|By Rick Kogan, Tribune Staff Writer.

`Nobody gets drunk anymore," said the man. "That's the problem. That's why we are experiencing this profound, terrible tragedy."

This was one night a few weeks ago and the gray-haired man was caressing an unprepossessing building on the northeast corner of Rush and Hubbard Streets. He continued to talk, oblivious to the small crowd around him: "Goodbye, darling. I will miss you. You've been better to me than most of the women I have known."

The man then finished his declaration by planting a long, sloppy kiss on the building. Few of those who witnessed this thought it in any way odd. Each of them had, in less romantic ways, bid goodbye that night to the building.

"Thanks for all the good times and long nights," said a female public relations executive.

"Thanks for the hangovers," said a male newspaper reporter.

The building is, or was, commonly known as Riccardo's, or Ric's, but its actual name was the Riccardo Restaurant and Gallery.

"It was a special place," said Jill Riccardo Allen. "A rare place."

She first set foot there in 1940.

"Where do I sit?" she demanded.

"On the floor!" said Ric Riccardo, who opened the joint in 1934.

From such a tart exchange a marriage and a daughter, Russia, were born. Unlike the rest of the crowd that showed up for Ric's closing night, wallowing in shared or collective memories, Allen had unique recollections.

There were 64 people--waiters and waitresses, cooks and bartenders--working for Ric when she met him. All were in attendance when Jill and Ric married. She is the only one who is still alive.

"I remember . . .," Allen said more than a few times, as she sat in a booth and observed the gathered mob.

"I remember . . .," she would say and what would follow was some lively, evocative tale, of games played on the bocce court that was once in the basement; of lion steaks served for selected friends upon Ric's return from a safari; of a private room just off the main entrance called The Padded Cell; and of Ric's three great Danes who wandered freely about the restaurant throughout the 1940s.

"I remember . . . I miss . . .," said the lovely Allen, who divorced Riccardo in 1949, but remained a frequent visitor to the restaurant. ". . . those dears , Charlie and Bobby. But who are all these people? I do not know these faces."

They were the ruddy faces of reporters and editors. The faces of advertising and public relations men and women. The faces of some of the once young and angry reporters who founded the Chicago Journalism Review at Ric's in the wake of the 1968 Democratic convention. The faces of elderly blacks who continued to frequent Ric's because it was once the only downtown restaurant to serve blacks without hassle.

These lastnighters had come to pay respects, perhaps to get a youthful buzz, to recall an affair, to recapture something they didn't realize they had been missing or merely to be part of a scene.

Studs was not there. Mike didn't show. Neither did many of those who were once such regulars that they would qualify as loyalists.

Montmartre of Midwest

Some are dead and others, taken with the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, shy away from places that remind them of once wayward ways. There were few youngsters about. They never developed a taste for the three-ounce drinks Ric's served.

"It's like a reunion of reprobates," said one fiftysomething reporter. "I haven't been this smashed since 1967. I feel great."

There is a tendency to romanticize the past and its landmarks. But Ric's was in its time--from the mid-1930s to about the late 1980s--a remarkable gathering place for artists, writers, journalists, opera singers and movie stars, admen, drunks, scalawags and bon vivants, real and would-be.

It was called the Montmartre of the Midwest, and its final night--Aug. 25--was wonderfully colorful and raucous, a gathering of those whose spirits might not have been as free as they once were but who remembered, as one TV producer put it, "when being carefree was not a sin."

It was an impromptu, word-of-mouth affair. There was no formal announcement. The mid-August news that the building had been purchased, for purposes that remain uncertain, by the William Wrigley Co.--owners of the famous white Wrigley Building across Hubbard Street--simply made the rounds.

Ric's is closing!

No way. When?

Friday night.

See you there?

Wouldn't miss it.

During its last week, Ric's had been uncharacteristically jammed for lunch, and on its final day owners Nick and Bill Angelos distributed photocopies of the menu, autographed by Nick.

This was a dubious memento, for it had been some time since the food had been a main attraction. The menu was decidedly old-fashioned, with its veal dishes and green noodles--spumoni and tortoni for dessert. How could this match such au courant competitors as Tucci Milan or Avanzare?